


A Curse Through the Mirror

by aroseandapen



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Fairy Tale Curses, M/M, Tragedy, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25025986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroseandapen/pseuds/aroseandapen
Summary: Kokichi has been cursed for as long as he can remember. If he ever views the outside world directly, he will die soon after. His only view of outside is through pictures and the mirror that hangs above his desk. Because of this, he's lived his life in isolation, painting scenes from his imaginative dreams and having the townspeople sell them in order to get by. His favorite dream, though, is one where he meets with a man with eyes of warm lavender, albeit with ridiculous hair.It's only a dream of course, but at least while asleep he can actually be happy.
Relationships: Momota Kaito/Oma Kokichi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 67
Collections: Kokichi Ouma Month





	A Curse Through the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> For day 26 of Ouma Month, though I finished it late. It's based off the poem "Lady of Shalott", except only what I can remember of it from middle school, so I took a great many liberties with it. So it's not necessary to read for this fic, though if you have before then you know now this ends.

Kokichi dipped his feet into the babbling stream. The running water flowed in between his toes, pastel blues and purples like watercolors swirling around his feet. Blue skies above stretched out into infinity, the sun sparkling off the water below. He inhaled deeply, finding peace in the sounds of nature. At the same time, however, it filled him with incredible longing, a stranglehold on his heart threatening to choke him. He pressed a hand to his chest, sighing.

No matter what he felt, what he saw, in this realm, Kokichi knew it was just a dream.

And with the acknowledgement, the sun had vanished from the still blue sky. While it got no darker to his dream-gaze, it felt somehow dimmer. More lifeless at least, without the sunlight dancing off the moving water.

“Hey, it’s you again.”

Just hearing the voice that came from behind was enough to liven the world back up for him. The dream world, that was.

A grin tugged at his mouth. He lifted his chin, looking up at the man who smiled back at him. A dream-man of his own invention; he knew by the ridiculous proportions of the man’s hair, sticking nearly straight up from the back of his head as if he intended it to pierce the heavens. And his eyes of warm lavender seemed to contain the glow of a dozen stars, promising company and mischief and life. This wasn’t the first time the man had appeared in his dreams; it wouldn’t be the last.

“Hey, you’re late!” he needled. The pout he meant to wear failed, his smile too big and persistent to contain. Drat, but at least this open display was only within his own mind. “I’m already gonna wake up soon.”

Indeed, he could feel the beginnings of consciousness pulling at the corners of his mind. Soon enough his body would start to stir, and then the dream would be nothing but a faint memory in the real world.

The man snorted and rested a hand on top of Kokichi’s head. He ruffled his hair in apology. “Sorry. Can’t really control when I see you.”

Kokichi huffed. He flopped onto his back, grasping the other’s hand as he fell. The swift motions brought the man to his level, kneeling beside him next to the stream. There was no dirt to worry about, of course, but Kokichi wouldn’t have minded his hair getting dirty if he meant he could lounge at the water’s side.

“If you were really sorry, then you’d try harder, geez.”

The man rolled his eyes, but he laid down next to Kokichi. He didn’t bother taking off his shoes when he straightened out his legs, letting his heels drag in the stream. “Like I can control my dreams like that,” he said flippantly.

Kokichi smirked and closed his eyes. When he turned his face into the man’s shoulder, he could almost feel his body heat radiating from him--he could even almost smell a hint of cologne, which he imagined smelled like freshly crushed pine needles.

“Sure you can, it’s called lucid dreaming,” he said. “Silly…”

The next moment, he opened his eyes to the waking world, his body heavy with reality, the lonely ache in his chest more pronounced than ever. Kokichi sighed out his disappointment, hardly wanting to get out of bed but dragging himself up anyway.

He picked up the comb set on the nightstand for convenience, pulling it quickly through his hair to detangle the knots from turning about on his pillow. Once his hair lay flat he tossed it back down, hardly caring about keeping the table surface tidy and moving on to the far side of the room, where his desk had a canvas with a lake scene sketched onto it. Not the stream from his dream, but he remembered the colors present in it. He’d use watercolors today, he decided, and try to capture the peace he’d felt then before the memories of his dream slipped through the cracks of his brain.

Kokichi sat at his chair, not bothering to grab breakfast. He could eat at any time, and he wanted to capture his mental images first before he lost them.

A cord hung beside him; he pulled it, and the curtains behind him parted to reveal the window already pushed wide open. His eyes flickered to the mirror mounted just above eye level. Mere shadows of people walked past his window, smiles and laughter mingled with frowns and harried looks. He caught the faint whiff of baking bread from the store he knew was just a few doors down.

The thought of fresh bread made his stomach growl and mouth water, but he shook his head. It wasn’t like he could just go out and buy it anyway; he had to wait for one of his neighbors to drop by for the day, with yesterday’s profits of his paintings and to ask what he needed for the day. He would bake his own bread, that would be a good treat for the day.

Thus satisfied with the internal compromise, Kokichi finally shoved thoughts of bread and stores and baking out of his mind, and set to work putting color into the lake painting. He lost himself quickly in the activity, and even his loneliness was momentarily forgotten.

A knock at the door pulled his focus away from his art. He leaned back in the chair, taking a moment to stretch his arms above his head and examine his progress. The colors weren’t exact to his memory, but that was to be expected. It did what he’d hoped anyway, locking the imagery brought on by his sleeping mind end, promising to hold the precious events of his dream in place. Although he hadn’t added his literal dream man into the picture, gazing at the lake reminded him of spending that brief second by the stream with another person.

The lake itself was from a different dream, of course. He’d never been to the lakeside, though he knew that the town had one just on the outskirts. For years now, he knew that when it came time for him to die, it would be at the lake, listening to the water lap the shore until the blood froze in his veins.

The intense bouts of loneliness and longing promised to make that time come sooner rather than later. He couldn’t take only seeing the outside in reflection or dream for much longer. The first time he saw the outside world directly with his own eyes would be the last of his life, he knew. More frequently than ever, he wondered if it would be worth it just to end the eternal solitude his situation brought him. To see the world in bright color, unfiltered by the dust particles gathered on his mirror, and to feel the sun upon his face without fear for once.

Soon, maybe, when he was truly sick of living. But not yet.

Another knock reminded him of his visitor. Kokichi jolted upright from his chair, snatching the blindfold at the corner of his desk. He tied it tight around his head, knotting it so that it would neither fall off nor be pulled off by a malicious actor. Only light filtered through the fabric, and so he felt his way out of his room to the front door. It was a path he’d taken so many times now that he wasn’t surprised by any furniture or any walls on the way. He could do it with his hands tied behind his back and still be fine.

He only wished that  _ weren’t _ the case.

He felt for the doorknob when he reached the front door, pulling it open. Although he couldn’t see the person in front of him, he could feel her eyes on him. He couldn’t exactly blame her for it. Kokichi, the painter who never left the house, who asked others to do errands and sell his artwork, who answered the door wearing a blindfold made for a strange sight, he imagined. As much as he didn’t want to let it bother him, a twinge of jealousy twisted in his chest. He wished he could answer the door like a normal person, without fear of death just for greeting a guest.

“I’ve got the coin from yesterday,” the woman said. He tilted his head to the side, conjuring a face in his mind to put to her voice, even if it was entirely fabricated. “Here.”

Kokichi held out his hand and she placed a leathery pouch into his palm. He frowned, weighing it. “There’s not that much.”

“I didn’t that much,” she said.

He held a finger up to his chin. “Hmm? Really? You’re not lying to me? I’m wearing a blindfold, but I’m not stupid, you know. I’ll hear it in your voice if you’re trying to trick me.”

“Wh--of course not! That’s all I got!” she snapped. While charged with a defensive tone, he detected no dishonesty there.

He let his hand fall to his side. “Ok! That’s good enough for me! Can you get a few things from the store for me, pretty pretty please?”

She sighed faintly. “Yeah, what do you need?”

“Perfect!” Kokichi told her the short list, all ingredients he’d need to make bread. Not that he exactly knew how; he did it a few times when he was younger, but surely he’d figure it out as he went. “Please don’t take too long, I’ll have another painting for you to sell, too!”

Once he metaphorically saw her off, Kokichi quickly returned to his room. Once he ensured he was facing away from the window, he undid the knot at the back of his head and let the blindfold flutter down onto the table, blinking rapidly until his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room.

That was out of the way, but he didn’t feel much like going back to his painting, though he knew he should. Selling his art was the only way he could make a living with being outside as dangerous as it was for him, and he was fortunate enough that he had as much skill in it as he did. That, or the townspeople just bought his art because they felt sorry for a weirdo like him, but he highly doubted it. The pity-buying part, of course, not so much that they would feel sympathy for someone so strange as they no doubt felt he was. He’d never told them of his curse; none of them would believe him anyway.

Although the rumpled sheets of his bed called out to him, he plopped himself back in his chair at his desk. Unfortunately, he had a painting to finish before the woman returned with his groceries.

\----

When the sun began to set and the light in his room dimmed, Kokichi couldn’t be more relieved. The day, like every other that came before it, stretched into eternity. Each one was broken only by the night and, more importantly, the dreams brought on by his sleep. He yanked the cord beside him, and his room descended fast into darkness as the curtains dropped over the open window. Kokichi closed his eyes, not bothering to give them a chance to adjust. He was used to navigating so much of his house blindly that the hop, step, and jump between chair and bed was nothing.

He dropped heavily onto the mattress, letting his body bounce as he threw his legs up onto it. More than ready for his nightly dream, he wormed into his nest of blankets. They didn’t entirely cover him, but he didn’t care to fix the blanket to lay neatly over him. It was a warm day anyway, and the blanket was more a comfort thing than anything else. Kokichi wanted to take the shortest route from consciousness to sleep.

Wait. The moment he got comfortable, a sudden thought occurred to him. He froze. Had he put all the groceries away? By the time the woman had returned with the ingredients and Kokichi traded them for his lake painting, he no longer had felt like making bread. While he was fairly certain that he had, it only made sense to do so immediately, he didn’t remember. Milk could very well be sitting on the counter that moment.

But did it matter? Did he really care? He could be dead before he ever felt like using it anyway.

Flimsy logic at best, but it was enough for him. Shoving the worries out of his mind, he turned his face into the pillow and willed himself to sleep.

Not that it was easy. His mind remained active against his wishes. Eventually, though, his thoughts at last tapered off, and his mind slipped off into blissful unconsciousness.

Emerging through a hazy veil, the first clear thing Kokichi saw was a triumphant grin on the familiar of the dream man. A playful spark lit up his eyes and he crossed his arms.

“Hah! You’re always getting onto me about being late, and you’re the one making me wait tonight.”

“Pfft, that was on purpose. I’m just playing hard to get now, making you want me even more before I  _ bless _ you with my presence.” Kokichi waved him off before he tucked his hands behind his head. He tried not to think of how pointless this ribbing was. The man before him didn’t exist, didn’t have a real name except for one that Kokichi’s subconscious mind would have to come up with. Still, it was nice to pretend that he was somebody else, dreaming and connected to his own sleeping mind through some magic, some gift of fate.

If it was meant to be fate, however, then he knew it was fake. Destiny had never been kind to him.

“Uh huh, I’m sure that’s totally it.” Damn. It only got harder to provoke the other as time went on, maybe Kokichi was becoming bored of his own antics.

Kokichi turned his head to take in their surroundings. Initially there was nothing, but as he allowed his attention to wander, flat grass appeared around them, more green, more lush than anything he’d ever seen in his mirror. He sighed wistfully, rubbing his suddenly-bare foot over the ground. In the real world, it would probably feel pleasantly cool and wet against his skin. In the dream he could only imagine.

Suddenly, though, the man plopped his hand on Kokichi’s shoulder, breaking his focus from creating the scene around them.

He looked up and scowled, mildly irritated. The man wasn’t deterred.

“Tonight we should go on an adventure,” he said, and Kokichi’s interest was immediately piqued.

The furrow in his brows vanished. “What kind of adventure?”

Everything around him vanished, plunging them into total darkness, only the two of them lit up against a black canvas. Kokichi gasped, startled by the sudden change. He jerked away from the man’s hand. It wasn’t real, but the abrupt shift still left his heart pounding.

“Hey, easy, nothing’s gonna hurt you,” the man said, but his assurances only earned him a glare.

“Well  _ duh _ , I already know it’s a dream. Nothing can hurt me, obviously.” Kokichi huffed, twirling a piece of hair around his finger. “When you said we’re going on an adventure, though, I didn’t expect that to mean we’re visiting the void, geez.”

“It's not the void--I mean, I guess technically you could call it that, but that’s not all. Just let me concentrate, I’ll show you,” he said, and trailed off.

Gradually, the inky black around them began to light up. Tiny pinpricks of light poked through the nothingness around. Kokichi had seen stars before, but it was nothing to the pure splatter of lights that now surrounded them. They turned the darkness into a deep, dusty blue, with stretches of green and pink and purple like airy paint strokes behind them.

Kokichi held his breath as he drank it all in. He exhaled slowly, turning in an even slower circle to see all that he could.

“Wow.”

When he finished his revolution, the man wore a large grin. It widened when Kokichi at last faced him again. “Right? The universe--damn, I wish I could’ve done this way before, I never even thought of it. We were always already at that lake, or someplace like that. Until you talked about lucid dreaming last night, I didn’t even  _ think _ that this would count as that.”

It was weird to hear a dream figure speak as if he was the one dreaming. Kokichi shifted his weight, although technically he weighed nothing, unnerved. “It’s really pretty.”

“And it’s real too!” he declared, which Kokichi was absolutely certain was a lie. “Telescopes have gotten pretty damn good, I love checking out the stars at night… imagine being surrounded by them, wouldn’t that be so cool?”

Kokichi huffed out a short laugh. “We’re imagining it right now, dummy.”

The man lightly slapped Kokichi’s arm with the back of his hand. “You  _ know _ what I mean.”

“Do I?” Kokichi tried to retort, but his laughter ruined any chance of getting it out with a straight face.

Later, Kokichi woke up practically floating. His smile remained glued to his face, even with his eyes open to the same ceiling he’d opened them to each day for as long as he could remember. The man had spoken of stargazing, and planets, and constellations that each held their own story from the people who’d “drawn” them out. It had enchanted Kokichi; even though he could never stargaze himself, he liked the idea of laying beside someone he was comfortable with to look up at the night sky.

If he could, Kokichi would choose that same man to be at his side. It only made sense, with his the only face that Kokichi really knew. Everyone else was a voice in his ears, obscured by the blindfold that helped keep him safe. When he sat at his desk that morning, he knew he would paint the man from his dreams.

His heart warmed as he formed the image in his mind, and he pinned it there to reference as best as the hazy memories would allow.

Peaceful, content, he picked up a pencil from where it had rolled near the edge and began his sketch.

The day wore on, and with it the outside world kept moving while he remained in his bubble of isolation. Kokichi hardly noticed as he finished his sketch and moved onto painting. He didn’t care much about keeping his paints fresh, each lid popped open left that way as he used each color. His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth in concentration; the noise of crowds of people flooding the market a background tune that he didn’t notice at all.

Mid-painting, Kokichi finally raised his head. He leaned back in the chair, stretching his arms over his head so his stiff joints popped. As he shook the kinks from his limbs, he surveyed the progress of his painting. The man from his dreams was emerging nicely despite the constraints of his vague memories of the time he spent asleep.

A fond smile lit upon his lips. If it wasn’t the middle of the day, he’d consider going straight back to sleep just for the chance to see him again. To see  _ someone _ , really, but he knew from experience that the man rarely appeared during naps that he took before nightfall.

Someone knocked at the door, startling him with a squeak. He forgot entirely about the expected arrival of someone who would help him with errands for the day.

Annoyed, he sighed as he reached for his blindfold. He only wanted to get back to his painting, and this got in the way of that. Not only that, but he’d need to have something to sell today or tomorrow, and this subject in particular he wanted to keep to himself. That meant he’d have to set it aside for the day and work on something more lucrative unfortunately, as much as he wanted to focus on one thing.

Kokichi’s eyes flickered up to his mirror automatically, on habit. The streets had cleared somewhat in the few minutes that made up his break. Then someone passed by who made Kokichi’s throat close and his eyes widen. The blindfold slipped through his slackened fingers.

The man from his dreams, from the painting on his canvas, walked straight by his window.

Numb with shock, Kokichi spun around sharply, his breath caught in his chest so that he couldn’t cry out. His hand stretched towards the window in silent plea for him to stop. The impossibility of his appearance had him reeling. More shaken than he’d been in his entire life, for a solid minute he couldn’t process what he had just seen.

Gradually, realization dawned on him. The knowledge of what he had done washed over him, chilling him to the core. He looked outside; he triggered the curse. Already he felt the icy fingers of it spreading in his veins.

The mirror behind him shattered. Kokichi cried out, the sound jolting him forward. He turned around, covering his head on instinct as shards of glass rained onto his desk. A large piece knocked a bottle of red paint. It tipped over, spilling thick red liquid across the canvas. The paint rolled to the edge and spilled over his desk, where it pooled onto the thin carpet beneath.

Kokichi raised a fist to his chest. For the first time in his life, he genuinely felt horrified about the curse, rather than lonely and apathetic to his inevitable fate.

It wasn’t fair, why him? Why him, and why had he seen a man literally straight out of his dreams, like a cruel taunt about what he could never pursue? In another sort of story, it would be like fate had brought them together. They could be friends outside of dreams. He could find out why he kept seeing him in his sleep.

This wasn’t that sort of tale, though, and soon Kokichi would die.

At the very least, however, he thought he deserved to learn the man’s name.

As the crow flew, Kokichi climbed directly out the window. For the first time, he stood in direct sunlight that dazzled and blinded him for a few seconds, but he ran in the direction he’d seen the man go anyway. His vision cleared by the time he came across an intersection, which he paused at to look in all directions. His heart lodged in his throat, hoping keenly that he hadn’t lost the man already.

Then there he was. Just to the right down the street. Dizzy with the tumultuous mixture of fear and relief, he sprinted the last stretch to catch up with the man. His bare feet slapped against the pavement, stinging and burning, but he pushed through the pain.

“Hey! Hey,  _ wait _ !” he hollered at the top of his lungs, at such a volume he wasn’t used to that it hurt his throat to do.

Remarkably, the man did wait. He stopped in his tracks, and in almost slow motion he turned to face Kokichi. Their eyes met--Kokichi’s with those warm lavender eyes that even in real life held starlight within them. Kokichi’s breath caught in his lungs; he slowed to a stop as he finally caught up.

His ears rang, his body both hot from exertion and freezing from the curse. The man from his dreams was real, and here he was in the flesh, and his eyes widened with a stricken look on his face that Kokichi couldn’t fathom.

“Y-you…” Kokichi began, but he had to hunch over to catch his breath. He braced his hands on his thighs as he gasped for air.

The man stepped towards him, a hand raised towards him in concern. “H-hey, are you alright?”

Despite the burning in his lungs, Kokichi forced himself back upright. He tucked his hands behind his head, his grin pretending at effortlessness. “Hey, of course I am. It’s just been a while since I ran.”

Or rather, Kokichi had never run in his life, stuck in that room for that time. But he didn’t want the man to worry about him. It wouldn’t matter. Soon Kokichi would die, and it was selfish enough to approach him like this when his life was already almost over.

Before the other could respond though, Kokichi asked, “Hey, what’s your name anyway? Just curious, you look like someone I knew before.”

The ice crawled through his veins as the man struggled to catch up with the situation. Kokichi bounced on the balls of his feet, despite it doing nothing to warm him back up. His extremities tingled as his impatience grew. He nearly snapped just as the man finally gave him an answer.

“Kaito, my name’s Kaito.” He shook his head, as if to clear it of thoughts muddying his mind. Then, summoning a wide grin, Kaito jerked his thumb towards himself in a show of enthusiasm that Kokichi was so used to seeing in his dreams. “I’m Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars!”

The familiarity of his voice made Kokichi smile faintly. “Kaito, huh…”

Kaito nodded. “So what’s--?”

“Anyway!” Kokichi chirped, cutting him off before he could finish the question. “I’m bored now, so I’m getting outta here. See ya, Kaito!”

“Huh?  _ Wait _ !”

Kaito stepped forward, reaching a hand out to him, but Kokichi ducked under his arm and took off. In the time it took for him to turn, Kokichi had already rounded a corner into the nearest alley. Behind him he heard the shouts and footfalls as Kaito gave chase, but he had no hope of catching up to Kokichi. He made sure of that.

A bittersweet feeling filled his chest. Though he would die at least with a name put to the face he knew so well right now, he found himself wanting to live more than ever, in a cruel twist of fate. If only he’d been more careful. He could’ve found the man on his own, wearing a blindfold and navigating the streets by ear. Maybe he could’ve had a happier ending, rather than the one assigned to him by destiny.

_ Sorry Kaito, _ he thought, guilt swirling in his chest over forcing himself into Katio’s life when he was a dead man anyway. He desperately wanted to spend a little more time with him. Maybe he would even find out why this near-stranger appeared every night in his dreams.

But he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t. Already he couldn’t feel either his fingers or toes thanks to the curse, and the cold got worse by the minute. Kokichi still wanted to die on the lake, and that hadn’t changed even now.

Even if tears now welled in his eyes. How  _ unfair _ it was, to die when something good finally happened to him for the very first time in his life.


End file.
